Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Republican Convention Reacts

Republican Convention Reacts

The GOP bloggers seem to have collected their thoughts following the weekend:

David Chung of Hawkeye GOP (who I met Saturday) has been less active on the blog since joining the state central committee, but has a series of four posts, including one on a "loyalty oath" that would try to get candidates to at least acknowledge the platform.

Speaking of which, I found it interesting that the "right to life" (sic) section was the very first item in the platform. Also, while it calls for a constitutional ban, it then goes on to name some lesser measures (funding, notification, parental consent, etc.) consent. Why bother, if you've banned it constitutionally? The writer in me wants some sort of transitional sentence ("until we reach that goal we support these intermediate measures" or something). If I were writing it, I would have done that. Actually, if I were writing it, it would have been pretty much the opposite, but I'm critiquing language at the moment.

The Spore(r) has a few more thoughts. Unlike the Dems, the GOP elects their congressional district level delegates the night before state convention, and some districts were more efficient than others.

And Nader plans to debate a dummy, which ought to be a fair fight. I love my third party friends, but Real People don't care about debate exclusion as an issue. Non-political types feel like paying attention to TWO candidates is too much work, let alone four or five.

That said, I'd like to see a split system: one early debate with the candidates who have a theoretical chance of winning based on ballot access -- which would mean five or maybe six this year -- and then the later debates with just the people above x percent in the polls. My theory is that, having seen the lesser known candidates, the public will largely reject them and the fairness argument will be defused.

But empty chair stunts like Nader is pulling usually succeed only in making a candidate look ridiculous. It worked soooo well for Ed Fallon in the primary...